Of What Can Be
by RinoaDestiny
Summary: FFIV. Not everyone gets to return home a hero. Some don't return at all. Cecil watches as things go terribly wrong, when words spoken on the Lunar Whale becomes his nightmare. Deathfic


Final Fantasy IV

(All characters and settings belong to Square-Enix)

Written By: RinoaDestiny

**_Of What Can Be_**

_Summary: Not everyone gets to return home a hero. Some don't return at all. Cecil watches as things go terribly wrong, when words spoken on the Lunar Whale becomes his nightmare (Deathfic)._

* * *

He was too slow. He was a Paladin – a warrior exquisitely trained to the rigors of the sword – and his feet refused to move quickly enough. In his hand, the holy blade of Excalibur, once needed, now stalled his movements; everything from the armor he wore, to the weapons and gear he carried and the reflections of the crystalline walls of the Lunar Palace mocked him. He was Cecil Harvey, half-Lunarian and hero, and he couldn't stop the horror commencing before his eyes.

_"__Rosa__!"_

The white mage turned, arrow fitted to string; her blond hair flying as she whirled on the incoming assailant. A blur of white against her bow, knocking it out of her delicate hands and Cecil watched, stunned as she crumpled to the ground. He dreaded the expected sight of red on the crystalline walls and floor, but his terror abated somewhat. There was no blood, and no signs of mortal injury.

_Rosa. __Rosa._ His internal chant broke as a terrified cry shattered the silence.

"No! No! Rosa…what have I…?" Dark blue armor clanked uncertainly as the dragoon reeled back, face frozen in horror. The paladin forced himself to focus, to move; whether to apprehend his struggling friend or to offer healing to his fallen beloved, he didn't know. He loved both, and both were down – one by Kain's hand and the other by power beyond their control. Beyond Kain's control, he had to remember that.

Kain fought against Zemus, he saw that.

He had feared bloodshed, when it burst upon them with Kain's spear in their midst, cutting a wide swath through their party. Edge had shot backwards away from the sudden attack, with Rydia backpedaling, and the spear tip nearly skewered them if he hadn't shoved Rosa away. His sword had swung out to block the blow, but the dragon helm was suddenly in his face, and the blade fell out of his hand as he met the brunt of the head slam full-on.

That had given his friend, now thrice-a-betrayer, more than enough time to kill Rosa. It never happened, because Kain Highwind fought back.

It was the blunt end of his spear, suddenly reversed, that struck Rosa upside the head, knocking her unconscious. That was what Cecil saw, momentarily mute in his horror. Kain also never stabbed him, although that was perhaps what Zemus wanted him to do. The wretched screams emitting from the dragoon tore at his heart, spurring him to his feet. There was a clatter as the Holy Lance dropped and rolled down the inclined passageway.

"What have I done?" Gauntleted hands grabbed desperately at that helmed face. "I didn't…I didn't want to do that!" Kain retreated further down the hall, away from them all. Whether because of the shock of the speed of the treachery or the undeniable fact that Rosa lay limp on the mirrored floor, Cecil found himself sluggish. Something moved past his sight in a flash. He almost didn't register who or what it was. Then, the ringing dual sound of steel from scabbard jolted him, and he knew who it was.

"Edge, no!"

He was upon his feet and running, too panicked to consider that he put Kain's life before Rosa's. But Rosa would survive – could survive; he had no guarantee for his best friend, whom extracted a promise from the Eblan ninja that left death as a finality. He hadn't paid attention to it, hoping that it wouldn't come to pass – that Kain would never betray them again.

How naïve he was but he wanted to believe. And because of that, everything had deteriorated into this.

"Edge!" His hand shot out, crystal refracting against the crimson-stained cloth guards that protected Edge's knuckles. "What do you…?" His words died, dry in his already parched mouth. Red upon blue, nearly purple; moonlight upon the whiteness of skin, the agony reflected in gray-blue eyes, and the pale swatch of hair that spilled from beneath the dragon helm. Kain barely stood against the wall, the colors of betrayal and execution repeated ad nauseam across numerous mirrors.

Cecil trembled.

Contemptuously, the ninja ripped his arm away from him. "He's a traitor thrice over. I would save your pity for someone else." To hear Edge so bitter, speaking about Kain nonetheless, doubly broke and ground his heart to dust. Usually, the older man sounded and acted juvenile, to the point where Rydia rolled her eyes, Rosa giggled, Kain ignored him, and he took it all with a smile.

He couldn't smile now.

Shoving Edge aside with un-Paladin-like brusqueness, he stood before the suffering dragoon. Kain's steel-blue gaze met his, glassy with pain, and the man doubled over, coughing blood. His friend's fingers dug into the folds between his vambraces, clenching painfully tight as they both hit the floor. His knees cracked, bones protesting even as his voice did, disbelieving. "Why?"

"He kept…kept his promise."

Pressing his hand against the growing dark stain where Kain's armor and tunic parted ways, Cecil bit back the despair that swelled against his throat. He'd seen how deadly the Murasame and the Masamune were in battle; at how many fell dead to quicksilver blows, sliced into irreparable pieces. Kain's stomach was stabbed clean through, muscles and organs torn. His lung was also damaged, where liquid warmth seeped downward to join the gore there.

Edge had never meant to give him a quick death.

Rosa would be able to mend this, he thought, and on the heels of that, he pressed harder against the fatal injury. If he could cure some of it – drain his own healing reserves – maybe Kain could live.

But even that wasn't meant to be.

Surprising for a dying man, Kain seized his hand, trying to force it back from the pulsating wound that continued to dye the floor red where they knelt. "No, Cecil." His friend's voice was soft and gentle. "Let me go. You and the others…"

"You need to come, too, Kain. Help us fight Zemus together."

"I've…you don't need a traitor, Cecil."

"Kain, you can't." Only Rosa and Kain had ever seen his tears. They were so close to ending all of this. Why, of all times, did this have to happen? "You'll bleed to death, Kain. I can't leave you here."

"Go fight Zemus, Cecil." He could hear the beginnings of blood welling within Kain's lung, thickening his voice even as the words grew faint. "Become a hero…become Baron's king…heal what was wrought upon it…"

"And you?"

"A footnote in Baron's history…"

"Is that all you see yourself as?" He grasped the other man hard, aware of how the body across from his weakened. The floor reflected red, slippery with it. "Kain, you deserve more than that!"

"Do I?" A bitter laugh echoed in his ear even as the dragoon buckled, loosing his grip, only to vomit blood in a messy splash upon the once-pristine surface. The other warrior's skin was clammy, paler than before, and Cecil knew, with all the experience he'd had in combat as Baron's ex-commander of the Red Wings, that death drew near. Kain, undoubtedly, knew the same. They were both raised in a militaristic court, decked with the glory of war and were taught the fundamental rules of engaging an enemy before they were ten.

The realities of battle, however, were nowhere nearly as glorious.

It wasn't fair. Kain was only one-and-twenty years of age, barely into full-fledged manhood, and it wasn't right that he, the younger – barely a man himself – was cradling the other, watching as life gushed out of him from wounds he wasn't allowed to heal. Blue-gray eyes misted, growing dim and Cecil was afraid. "Kain, please don't."

"Cecil…I'm so sorry."

"I've already forgiven you," he wept, unable to hold back the tears. "Isn't that enough? You tried, Kain. You didn't let Zemus take over you completely."

"Cecil…" Kain gazed up at him, blue and blue – pale eyes through a dark helmet – and his words fell like whispers around him, like rain during a light storm. Ten more minutes at the most and less than five if fate was merciful. His heart contracted, pulling painfully at his chest as he wiped the blood from his friend's face, from light blond strands of hair. "Tell Rosa…"

His tears fell harder. "She'll forgive you, too. You know that, Kain."

"I'm afraid, Cecil. I see their ghosts…awake and asleep. They'll haunt me in the grave."

It was more than he could bear to hear. Cecil heard shuffling behind him – Rydia and perhaps Rosa – and felt Edge glaring daggers into his back. If he wasn't here, blocking the Eblan prince's venomous gaze, Kain would see it all. See it and accept it, as surely as his execution by Edge's hands. The third blow that he'd held back; the third blow that he didn't allow Edge to land, would've killed Kain.

He didn't want it to land, to smite Kain from his life.

From hers.

But by doing so, Kain suffered. His breaths were shallower, his skin drawn and pale, his hair lank, and his eyes lifeless. Kain wanted to die. He knew it from his request to Edge, from his refusal to be healed of the wounds that gaped open, and from the way how he told him to fight Zemus; to make him a footnote in Baronian history. There was one final blow that needed to be struck, to remove Kain from agony and to give him the only peace he knew.

It was his.

Cecil removed the small blade he often hid on his person, in case his other weapons were lost in a melee. It was sharp, honed to a killing edge. If Kain felt guilty for all the wrongs he'd committed during his ordeal under Golbez's control, Cecil was willing to bear this guilt – this sin – in recompense for that. It was not something the poets or bards would refuse to sing. The rightful hero slaying the traitor was hardly material to be scorned; indeed, many would cheer to hear of Kain's demise.

He would not be cheering.

Tears and eternal guilt were his lot, as betrayal and scorn was Kain's.

It was unfair.

As he drove the knife into Kain's chest, piercing his heart and seeing the light fade out of those eyes that once looked upon him as a brother – eyes that he remembered since they were children, when one could dream and nothing went wrong – his own composure broke, leaving him sprawled atop the other in tears. Things that would come later, such as burying Kain in state with military honors or the longer path that it would take for his redemption for fratricide, were chaff in the winds of his grief.

Rosa would awake. They would defeat Zemus and return to the Blue Planet as heroes. They would become Baron's royals, king and queen and establish support from kingdoms far and wide. Kain would become more than a footnote in history, for the victorious whom remembered gave honor where honor was due.

Yet, all of that would come later. His guilt and his grief dragged him down, miring him in tears that soaked into blood. Crystal would mirror those dark blues, whereupon he drowned himself, unwilling to let go even when the others bade him to. His fingers clutched the dagger tightly; marking him as the one who killed the one he loved as a brother, as his other half.

And his heart would clench, for the knife twisted in his own.


End file.
